Centennial
by vinnie2757
Summary: 100 day challenge for England/Belgium
1. Crash

**Title: **Centennial

**Fandom: **_Hetalia: - Axis Powers_

**Author: **Me, obviously

**Genre:** everything, but mostly romance

**Characters/Pairing(s):** England/Belgium

**Rating: **T

**Warnings:** Everything

**Summary: **100 day fic challenge for England/Belgium

**Chapter Summary: **It begins and ends with a broken plate. HetaOni!verse

**A/N: **Spoilers: this is my number one OTP. Prompts found from 100-prompts at LJ. Enjoy, lovelies~!

**001: Crash**

It's the broken plate that starts it.

After what feels like months, after a hundred terrible days, they finally pull free of the darkness and tumble back into the light, gasping after drowning and laugh without breath for a long while. There are casualties, of course, because there are always casualties, and once the relief wears off, they realise those casualties.

Veneziano – North Italy – Feliciano Vargas – he can't stand, can barely even breathe. Germany is refusing to put him down, carrying him so gently in his arms that it must surely feel like the little Italian hero is flying. It's just as well, for Italy is refusing to let go of his German – what exactly were they, anyway? – well, whatever he is, he's got his fingers tangled so tightly into the tears of his jacket that there's little to no chance they're coming apart any time soon. Not that anyone would care to pull them apart, not after all the things that happened.

The others are battered and bruised, aching in places they haven't ever ached before, and they're all desperate for a good night's sleep, for a warm, _safe_ bed and a warm meal waiting for them on waking. They'll get it, of course, they'll get all that and more.

They're out of there. They're _safe_. That's more than any of them could have wished for.

England has to walk carefully, hand tight around America's sleeve. He'd turned down offerings to be carried – _save your strength, brat_, he'd said, meant _thank you – _and had made a spiel about how he had to learn – and was beginning to regret it, a little. Even though America assures him there's nothing in front of him, he keeps his free hand outstretched all the same, ready for any sudden obstacles.

Once they're back in the town, a little later than the others to compensate for England's baby steps, everything slots into place. It feels _right_ now, it feels _good_. Everyone's alive, everyone's here, everyone's _okay_.

Then Belgium starts screaming, and the good mood dissipates.

England doesn't know how she knew, whether France or Spain or Romano had tried to tell her quietly and prepare her, but as far as England knows, it's the second she sees him that she starts bawling. Everything goes silent, and all he can hear is the clack of her heels on the cobblestones and then America's easing his hand away and he's trapped in a limbo filled with the smell of her, sugar-sweet and cloyingly gentle, and forced to do nothing but listen in as she screams obscenities he's only ever heard on her tongue in the midst of war.

She tries to hit America, he learns, not that it comes to much good, because out here, the boy's back to being an immovable brick wall and all she does is bruise her knuckles.

'You promised me!' she screeches, and England is reminded of the fierce little fireball that had put him in his place whilst gloating on his flagship. 'You _promised_ me you'd take care of him! That he'd come back safe!'

'He did!' America replies, that whining tone he adopts when he's in trouble and under attack. 'Look, he's right there! He's in one piece!'

Belgium is not impressed, and the sound of her slap is loud enough to jar.

'He's _blind_,' she snarls, and breaks.

'Bel,' England says, reaches for her, hopes it's the right direction. 'Give me your hands.'

He's wearing America's aviator sunglasses over makeshift bandages from China. It didn't really do much, but until they could clean his eyes out properly, it was the best they could do with what they had. The glasses were just to distract, England thinks, doesn't remember America's reasoning. There's still blood all over his face, he can feel it dried and flaking on his cheeks and in the scruff on his jaw, clogged under his nose and stained into his lips and gums and tongue. He looks a state, but he supposes they all do.

They all did, last time he saw them.

It takes her a moment, but she eventually puts her hands in his, and _oh_, he'd missed her hands, dainty and warm and fitting into his so imperfectly they couldn't possibly have been made for anyone else. He tugs her in, and she goes, falls into his arms and buries her face in his chest, sobs against his heart and he's still damp with sweat and blood and God knows what else, but she doesn't seem to care, just begs him not to leave her again. Carefully, he runs his fingers through her hair and settles his arms around her, holds her tight.

'America?' he asks after a moment, nose buried in her hair. It still smells of roses, though a little more like blood.

'Yeah?'

'Can you take us home?'

America hesitates. 'Will you be alright?'

'I can look after him just fine,' Belgium replies, still pressed against the clock tower ticking steadily in his chest. 'None of you are getting your hands on him again. Not for a long time.'

He knows better than to argue; they all do. America agrees quietly, and they all disperse, go to where they most want to be, now that they can. England wouldn't be much surprised, bullied into curling up in the back seat of a rental car with his head in Belgium's lap and her fingers teasing through his hair, to know there were new relationships formed by that house, that he'd get his sight back to find that there were new couples outside of politics clinging to each other and whispering loving nothings into their lover's ear.

They were all a little slow on the uptake, he thinks, sighs pleasantly and tangles his fingers in her cardigan that used to be his, he'd gotten a relationship outside of politics centuries ago.

* * *

It's a long time before they get to an airport and get home. Home is a cottage in the Cotswolds, from the 1600's with additions made where necessary. It hasn't much changed since Victoria, but there are new fixtures and fittings from where Belgium first moved in. He's rather fond of this house, and rather fond of all the little ways she's crept into it.

He's startled awake by the sound of a crash. It sounds like metal hitting the floor, and he rolls out of bed and to his feet, calling for her. If he couldn't recognise his bed by the feel of the sheets alone, he might have panicked, thought he was back in the mansion, but his nose is full of Chanel no. 5 and his laundry detergent, and he knows he's home safe before he's even on his feet.

'Bel? Are you alright?'

'Get back into bed!' she calls back, amused and exasperated in equal measure. 'I dropped the teapot, it's alright!'

'I would,' he murmurs, reaches out with his hands and steps until he finds the bed post and inches his way back into bed. 'But it's hard to do things right now.'

He's half asleep again by the time she comes up.

'Lazy,' she accuses, and he waves a hand at her. There's a rattle and something's set on the bed. 'Sit up, lazy, I brought you a cream tea.'

Tea sounds good, actually, but when he sits up, she settles in his lap, and that's even better. Even though he's wearing pyjama bottoms, she isn't. She isn't wearing anything, by the feel of her, except one of his T-shirts.

'Oh,' he says, hand on her hip under the shirt.

'Maybe later,' she replies, and brushes her mouth along his jaw. 'For now, tea, and then I'll get you in the shower. It's been a long week.'

'A week,' he repeats, but lets her feed him jam and cream and scones she made herself, steadies his hands so he can drink, and all the while, she remains straddling his lap and half-naked.

They have a brief argument about whether or not he needs help showering, and eventually she makes him promise that he won't wash his hair. She stays in the bathroom in case he does need help, but otherwise lets him get on with it. She dries him off, helps him step into jogging bottoms and tugs a T-shirt over his head and leads him back to bed.

'Just stay here, sweet,' she murmurs against the corner of his mouth.

She disappears again, and comes back soon enough. She's got something with her, England thinks, and she settles across his lap again. It smells sterile.

'I'm going to clean up your face, okay?'

Oh, that's what it was.

'Alright,' he agrees, and holds still whilst she peels the bandages away.

Belgium has a strong constitution, apparently, because she barely flinches to see his eyes, or what remains of them. As she cleans out the sockets, she tells him that she survived two world wars working as both a spy and as a field nurse, getting him home to find he's burnt his eyes out is child's play.

'They brought you in a few times, do you remember? You made such a mess of yourself, and you made such a fuss trying to convince me you were okay. '_Tis but a scratch_! You'd say. You were missing a fucking arm.'

'It was my bad arm.'

'It was your left arm.'

'Exactly.'

He can almost see her, can imagine the look she's giving him, and he just grins lazily at her. He behaves, sits quietly and lets her work, and once he tells her he misses her. She says she's right there. That's not what he meant and they both know it.

When she's done, cleaned the blood off him and bandaged him up and padded his eyes so he can't scratch or bump into anything and make it worse, she stays in his lap, lays him back and kisses him until he's asleep. She repeats the process every day, and whilst it's just the two of them, just the two of them sending things crashing to the floor trying to help the other, just the two of them doting on each other and loving until all they can do is tumble into bed and giggle their way into the night, just the two of them and the bloody cat, it's okay, he thinks, to let her.

She doesn't forgive him for months. His eyes are back within a week, and once they are the nightmares start, and she doesn't forgive him for that either, because he should know better by now, he's old enough and ugly enough to look after himself. But mostly she doesn't forgive him for worrying her sick, for having her convinced that he wasn't going to make it out of there, that he was going to do something mindlessly heroic and, frankly, stupid, to save America or God-knows-who, and she wouldn't have forgiven him if he had. She's never been so scared in her life she tells him one day, curled up around him with the windows open to let the rain in. He's tracing patterns with his fingertips across her skin and she's tracing patterns around his eyes. She says that even that mission in Italy wasn't enough to scare her like this.

It's the closest she's ever come to losing him and he wishes he could promise her that it'd be okay, that he wouldn't do it again, but he can't.

'I love you,' he whispers, presses kisses along her back whilst she sleeps and he goes to make breakfast.

He drops a plate when he trips over the cat. The crash startles him as much as it does Samhain, and she leaps up onto the counter and then onto his shoulders whilst he stands there looking at his shaking hands.

'Sweetheart?'

England turns to look at her, and Belgium looks back at him, a hand on the doorway with her hair a mess. His dressing gown is hastily gathered around her, held by her hand rather than the belt. (He hasn't seen the belt for a year, convinced the bloody cat's made off with it.)

'Are you alright?'

Samhain meows and England nods, rubs a hand over his face.

'I think so. It just startled me, is all. It's early, go back to bed.'

Belgium ignores him, of course, because she always ignores him, and crosses the kitchen to reach up and brush her thumbs across his cheeks. Samhein leaps back down to the floor and disappears outside with a tinkle of her bell.

'You're crying,' Belgium whispers. 'Come back to bed. You're not okay.'

He closes his eyes and swallows. 'No,' he agrees. 'I'm not.'

**NOTES::**

If anyone remembers, Arthur's cat in _Devil in a Midnight Mass_ was called Salem. Since this isn't USUK, I thought **Samhain** would work better. I don't know, what do you think?

"**Tis but a scratch"** is an anachronistic shout-out to _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_.

When England says his **left arm is his bad arm**, he's referring to the fact that left-handedness was considered a sign of the devil for a long time within the Christian faith. It might still be, I don't really follow church doctrine closely enough to know, nor, particularly, do I care. It's my headcanon that he's left-handed, which is why it's a point at all.

On the topic of headcanons, I like the idea that **England burnt his eyes out** when he went blind, which would have left bloody gaping holes in his face. Of course, once he's back to his nation state, it's quick for him to heal, but since they're human in the mansion. Well.

**This is such a lovely way to start the show, isn't it? Still, we'll get a bit of lighter entertainment eventually. Maybe. The next four prompts are kind of iffy, but day 5 is a good one, so there's that at least.**

**++Vince++**


	2. Dim

**Genre:** slice-of-life, general

**Rating: **K+

**Warnings:** Mentions of sex.

**Chapter Summary: **A musing about Arthur's bedroom.

**A/N: **I don't know what happened here, but take a stream-of-consciousness piece anyway. Enjoy, lovelies~!

**002: Dim**

Arthur's bedroom isn't small, not really. A bit cluttered, certainly, and not helped at all by his habit of leaving clothes and books on the floor, but there's enough room to move around in it. But his house is old, and his bedroom overlooks the garden, facing mostly away from the sun. Oh, there's enough light to see by during the day, but it's a dim sort of affair, especially with the mahogany and burgundy theming.

Marie told him not to be such a fool about it, but he was a stubborn arse.

'I like red,' he shrugged whilst helping her put her clothes away. 'It's a good colour.'

She looks very pretty in red, he wants to say, but just hands her a blue sundress instead.

It's not so much that Marie doesn't like his bedroom, because she does, she likes it a lot. It's just that it's a little too dark for her tastes during the bright summer days, what few of them there are. She's much rather have pastel shades and neutral tones than this – this – sex haven he's made for himself over however many years he's been accumulating bed sheets and mahogany furniture.

His bed, for its part in his shenanigans, is bad enough, what with its fancy bed linen, and the brocade curtains because _of course_ he's got a four-poster, queen-size monstrosity of a bed, why would anyone ever expect anything else? Being a country house, it's a country sort of bed, looking as old as the house even if it's not, and he almost always has a patchwork quilt he made himself thrown over it, mainly to protect the sheets from the cat, but that's neither here nor there, because at least it makes his bed look a little more country-like, and not like something out of some pornographic regency film.

For all her grousing though, she feels extraordinarily safe in his bedroom with its dim lighting and dark theming. She's always felt safe in his house, and unlike a great many people in his life, nations and humans a like, his bedroom was never off-limits to her. She was allowed in there – expected to sleep in there, even, when she came to stay – from the day he came into possession of the house. He'd insist on her taking his bed despite there being two guest rooms, and despite her insistence to the otherwise, he'd sleep on the couch. After a decade of this nonsense, she forcibly dragged him into his own bed and slept pinning him to it. Things were easier after that.

'You know,' she says, nestled deep in the pillows and duvet with Arthur resting between her legs, arms hooked over her thighs. He'd been reading, but had dozed off somewhere along the way. 'This bed is entirely ridiculous.'

'You're only saying that because you almost spilled your coffee this morning.'

'I am not,' she argues, and tugs his hair, but he just gives her an exaggerated moan and lets the subject die with her laughter.

Arthur is as terrible as his bedroom, really, full of dark humour and sharp words, and she'd like to say he's as messy as his bedroom, but he made the mess in the first place, so you can't really separate the two, can you? Still, if his bedroom is a little part of his personality, it's the romantic in him. No, no, it's the – she can't say sex God, because he still makes noise about all sorts of ridiculous things he doesn't need to make noise about – but it's the highly-sexualised, second-greatest-pervert or whatever it is Francis calls him. It's the part of him that likes to lay her out and worship her until she's begging, and that's probably why she likes his bedroom so much, because it's as much their private space as the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden is. The bedroom is hardly the only place they've done the dirtiest of deeds, but it's the only place no one would dare try to interrupt.

But no, his bedroom is one of her safest places. Wrapped up in his bed sheets, with or without him tangled into burgundy and roses, it's warm, comfortable, quiet. It's safe, out here in the middle of nowhere where the only sound is the rain coming through the open window. No one can hurt her, because they've got to get through all the barriers he's set up, whatever they are, all the supernatural creatures he's got protecting his house, what of them like her enough to stay whilst she's around, he's got his _mother_ defending his house, in her own intangible way. And that's not even including the part where anyone thinking to try and hurt her has to get through his cat, a creature she is ninety per cent sure is actually the cat equivalent of a Hell Hound, and then they have to get through Arthur himself.

There is literally nowhere else on earth that she's safer, except maybe when she's in his arms.

'Are you going to get up today?' he asks her, half-dressed with a cigarette caught on his lip.

'No,' she replies. 'Take that outside before you light it.'

He rolls his eyes and pulls the window open, lets the rain in and goes downstairs anyway. She hears him under the window, but ignores him for the better part, tells whatever Fae is lingering around to go and do something mean to him. The Fae, of course, oblige and keep putting his cigarette out whilst he's trying to smoke it.

'You are the meanest person I have ever met!' he calls up to her.

'You love me!' she calls back, still sprawled out in bed.

The rain makes the light filtering into the room grey, mutes the richness of the wood and the textiles, dims everything until it lulls her towards sleep, a lullaby of a distant time where her main concern was working out how to eat healthily in a corset without hurting herself or making a mess. She'd managed that, so she manages to stay awake long enough for him to come back, mouth freshly brushed free of nicotine and his eyes are like acid fire in the dimness of the room when he grins.

It's late afternoon when Marie wakes, overcast and with the room even more muted. It's a dozing sort of light right now, the kind of lazy Sunday afternoons Arthur longs for, just for an excuse to sprawl out on the bed and trace patterns in her skin because he can't get out in the garden and work. He's drawing patterns in her skin now, along the swell of her hip and down the length of her thigh, leg bent up into the space between them. Her lazy retaliation is a rake of her nails through the hair below his navel.

'Again?' he asks, and she snorts, burrows herself deeper into the tangle of limbs and sheets and watches the rain through the window.

'No,' she denies, not that he'd been expecting a positive answer anyway. 'Let's just relax.'

He agrees with a hum, doesn't stop tracing patterns in her leg, now flung over his own. She thinks he might be writing 'I love you' into her skin, it seems like the sort of thing he'd do, but she's not got the mind to focus on it, just likes the coolness of his fingertips and the gentle pressure as he draws or writes or whatever it is he's doing. Sometimes she draws patterns back, but mostly she just rests her hand on his heart, hopes he knows it's as loud an "I love you" as his is. For a while, she drifts in the quiet peace, not asleep, but not awake either.

There is, after all, nowhere safer than in his dim, rich bedroom and under his cool fingertips and his silly romanticism.

**NOTES::**

My **human name for Belgium **is Marie Lateau. Marie is a common enough name in Belgium, and Lateau is the surname for the last person to experience the stigmata; a Belgian lass.

If there's one thing the English like to do, it's **complain**. I see no reason why he wouldn't complain about everything in the bedroom too.

I forget which strip it is, but there is (was?) a strip where **France says England** is the only one who's as perverted or even more perverted than he is. Or something along those lines, I just remember it being about England's sex ed videos.

England's mother is **Celt**, as a representation of all the tribes of Britain pre-41AD. I always imagine her to be a bit like Boadicea, all flaming hair and snarling in Rome's face when he tries to take her children away. Though the Celts as a people don't really exist now, just their descendants, I still think she lingers in her kid's houses, since Celtic history and Celtic belief is still pretty big in Britain, what with these new 'pagans' and the like. (No offence intended to any readers who consider themselves pagan, but it's not the same thing as it was back then.) And if you think for a second she'd let her baby's missus get hurt, you've got another thing coming.

**Apologies for the state of this one, I was writing on and off for about five hours.**

**++Vince++**


	3. Futile

**Genre:** general, with a liberal side of melodramatic angst.

**Rating: **K+

**Warnings:** Language.

**Chapter Summary: **Arthur's biggest problem is that he's a self-deprecating old fool.

**A/N: **Francis, baby, I missed you. Sorry I'm a day late with this. Enjoy, lovelies~!

**003: Futile**

**London, 20****th**** April, 1839**

It's a grey sort of morning, but then it always is in London. It's a very grey sort of place, England in general, and the black clouds hang not just over the cities but over the man himself, over Arthur Kirkland, in a personal little hell composed of over-dramatic misery and silly romantic, equally over-dramatic poetic mentality. The Romantics, Francis thinks, are quite possibly the worst thing the kid could have done to himself.

He has lived with Arthur's melodrama and woes for almost two thousand years, and sitting on the back porch of his London house looking out over his garden is no strange circumstance.

(In just over a hundred years, it will be obliterated, and all its history lost. Arthur will mourn it for a few days, and then return to battle with a grim look on his face. Francis will never find out what he lost in this house.)

They sit on the steps leading down into the grass and cobbled path through the flowerbeds, each with tobacco in their hands (Francis still smokes a pipe. Arthur has taken to rolling tobacco in thin papers. It keeps his hands busy, so Francis doesn't much complain.) and smoke in their lungs.

'She's free now,' Francis says, because the silence is getting to be too much. 'Independent.'

Arthur says nothing, expels a mouthful of smoke to one side and scrubs at his nose with his free hand. He hasn't slept, Francis knows, has seen Arthur in times of war, both against an enemy and against himself, and it is the latter position he finds himself in now. His eyes are bruised, rimmed with dark circles that will haunt him until the millennium, and his jaw unshaven. Rumpled and made of long lines, he looks exhausted. Steadfast, like always, but exhausted.

'If you wished to court her, you could. It is not as though she would object, you know that.'

Arthur shrugs, inhales again.

Francis sighs, rests his chin in his hand and drums his fingers against his cheek.

'It's going to be a miserable day,' he says.

'It's always a miserable day,' Arthur replies.

Finally, Francis thinks, interaction. Even if it _is_ melodrama, it's still a response from the Englishman, and that's all Francis needed.

'That's true enough,' he agrees. 'But it's going to be clear enough, I think, for a walk.'

'Why would I want to walk?'

'You could take Marie with you.'

Arthur huffs and goes silent again. Francis echoes him, growls a little in frustration.

'You are impossible!' he snaps, and gets to his feet, starts pacing on the stone behind them. 'How long now have you been in love with her? And not once did you attempt to court her! Of course, I understand, you never wished to come into conflict with her brothers, or with Antonio, but she is free of them all now! She is yours, if only you'd go and _tell_ her!'

'No,' Arthur replies, and stubs the butt of his cigarette out. 'I don't think so.'

'Why?' Francis snaps. '_Why_?'

'Because she wouldn't look at me twice,' Arthur replies. Morose, he adds, 'No one would.'

'Foolishness,' Francis dismisses. 'She has been watching you for centuries.''

'Don't be ridiculous!' Arthur snaps and gets to his feet to stomp off down the garden. Francis hastens to follow in time to hear Arthur say, 'She'd never want someone like me.'

To this, Francis laughs. 'Tell me, kitten, what is it that you are so afraid of? You are not surely so convinced she could never love you that you will never try!' He pauses, but there's no reply, and he frowns a little, shoulders dropping as comprehension weighs down on them. 'Oh.'

'I am not the kind of man she needs in her life,' Arthur says. 'I never have been.'

For a few minutes, there is silence. Arthur's biggest problem, Francis thinks, hands in his jacket pockets with his pipe caught between his teeth, is that he's a self-deprecating old fool, and what he needs is the wax slick of Marie's painted mouth pressed against his, but he'll never do anything that could warrant her doing it. To be honest, though, he's kind of surprised she didn't kiss him in the middle of the meeting, since it looked like she was ready to do much more than that, regardless of who might be watching.

She's asleep, in one of the guest bedrooms, the only one other than Francis that agreed to stay. Francis, for his part, isn't surprised that she did; honestly, he thinks that she expected him to return to his own home so she could have some time alone with Arthur to celebrate her new-found independence.

(In the twenty-first century, Alfred will tell Francis that he is a cock-blocking bastard. Francis will say he knows Arthur too well to expect him to let her do what she liked. He has enough problems maintaining a relationship without throwing her independence back into her face.)

He only stayed because he doesn't want Arthur to ruin it before anything has had a chance to start. Where's the fun in investing a thousand years into a couple only to watch it fall apart within seconds of them having a chance at being together without politics getting dragged into it? Sure, her brother will pitch a fit, and Antonio will try to give Arthur a serious talk, as though he had any place to say a word, but her decisions are, finally, her own, and should she wish to lavish Arthur with the attention she's been trying to give him for some eighteen-hundred years, she is perfectly within her rights to do so.

Arthur rambles to himself, whilst Francis is musing over ways to bring up the fact that he should just take the poor girl to his bed before she does something drastic to get his attention, and he rambles on for a good ten minutes. It's all sorts of asinine, ridiculous things. He's too old for her (they are, and always will be, the same age. A few years here or there make no difference, and even if he's twenty-three physically, she is not that far behind. She's most certainly of a legal age) is one, and status as an empire is another. (Considering she's watched him claw his way to the top and lose the one that mattered most, Francis thinks that this whole argument is clutching at straws and trying to talk himself out of it.)

The problem is that it's been working for over a thousand years.

'Do you know what I recommend?' Francis muses.

'If you suggest I go to her bed, I will put you in the rose bush behind you.'

Francis laughs at that. 'Don't be foolish, kitten, you wouldn't ruin the roses just to humiliate me. No, I think that when our independent beauty wakes, I shall be long gone and you shall sit with her and talk about the weather until she has enough of your silliness and tells you what you have both been skirting around for far too long.'

Arthur looks at him with god-awful sad puppy dog eyes, and Francis raises a hand to his own to block them out.

'No, don't look at me like that, I shan't let you fool around any longer. You have loved her for far too long to let her go now.'

Arthur ignores him and goes back to the steps. 'They're futile,' he says. 'Your efforts. They're futile. It's all futile because she doesn't love me. Not like that, and I won't – I can't – put that kind of pressure on her the day after her independence papers are signed.'

'She wanted you in that room,' Francis says, and leans against the trellis arch over the steps. 'I was watching her. She didn't take her eyes off you.'

'That means nothing.'

'It means everything, Arthur, if only you'd stop being stubborn long enough to see!'

'I thought you were leaving before she woke up. It's already a late enough hour.'

'Then you admit you want time alone with her?'

Arthur glares at him, and it's more emotion than he's seen all morning. 'That's not what I said. Now kindly sod off and leave me be.'

Francis rolls his eyes and goes back inside. As he's heading for the door with his bag, Marie comes down the stairs, wrapped in what looks to be a ruffle-trimmed dressing gown, with nothing underneath. Daring, but then Marie is not one for disguising what she wants, and it's a shame Arthur is blind, because she is hardly making a secret of it. She's wearing it very tactically, showing the full length of her collar bones and the curve of her shoulders. The curve of her breasts, too, is hardly disguised under the silk, and nor is the shape her hips.

'He must be mad,' Francis sighs.

'I'm working on it,' Marie promises, and swishes past him to go and find Arthur wherever he's chosen to lurk this time.

She finds him sitting in the living room, and she sits in an armchair opposite him, crosses her legs at the knee and oops – perhaps one side of the robe falls away to bare her leg, perhaps it doesn't, but it's more skin than she's dared to show him since they were children playing war. He talks about the weather for half an hour, and eventually blurts out that they could go for a walk, if she'd like. Marie smiles and says she'd love to.

**NOTES::**

**Belgium's independence** was signed on the 19th April, 1839 in London.

The **Romantics** were around in the early 1800s.

**Cigarettes**, as we know them today, weren't really around. They were just breaking in around the 1830s, but not many people smoked them. Cigars and pipes were much commoner. I think England need to fidget though.

In the early 1800s, **lipstick** wasn't considered a thing a respectable lady wore; cosmetics, in general, were reserved for actresses and prostitutes. I like to think Belgium just has the reddest lips for the sake of having the reddest lips. It draws attention to them. Especially England's attention.

**Whoops, I'm a day late with this, I'm sorry, I'll get days 4 and 5 done tomorrow.**

**++Vince++**


	4. Erratic

**Genre:** general, fluff.

**Rating: **T

**Warnings:** Language. Implicit sex.

**Chapter Summary: **His heart only ever tumbles and falls when it's in her hands.

**A/N: **Wow I fell really behind, like 30 days behind. This word was really hard, okay? Enjoy, lovelies~!

**004: Erratic**

There is nothing left of him; she's taken it all, pulled him apart piece by piece until all that's left is her name carved into his tongue and pleasure so agonising he thinks it divine.

'Marie,' he gasps, begs and arches and pulls himself together only to shatter again. 'Marie, Marie, Marie.'

'Hush,' she whispers, breath warm on his inner thigh, fingers warm on his heart. Or is it the other way around? It's impossible to tell. 'I've got you.'

He knows that, knows no one else will ever stand under him from a Fall so high he couldn't survive alone, couldn't exist without her there to bolster him, catch him. But it feels like falling, feels like he's plummeting with his heart in his throat and weightlessness he's never felt with anyone else. Never felt it before, for that matter, for he has never felt so at the mercy of someone else, so dependent on them and his whole being is theirs, heart, mind and soul, everything belongs to them and the lack of responsibility is as horrifying as it is relaxing. He can't see, hasn't seen for what feels like forever, can't find the strength to open his eyes. Her nails rake through the hair below his navel, in the curls they gather into, but when he arches into it, she pulls her hand away, disappears entirely until he's left in limbo.

She tuts at him, actually tuts.

'No,' she chides, palms over his hips and pressing him down. 'I told you that I wouldn't touch you. That was the agreement.' Satisfied he's going to stay put, even if his hips are canted, she returns her nails to that dark blond trail of hair. 'I was going to make you come without touching you, remember?'

'Fuck that,' he says, begs. 'I can't – I can't.'

'Really?' she asks. 'Do you really mean that?'

He punches the mattress beneath his fist, punches it hard enough that the strings rattle. Alfred doesn't get his strength from just his landmass. 'Fuck you.'

'Would you like to? Just say the word, my love. Just say it, and I'll stop. We'll do it vanilla.'

'No,' he says, shakes his head. 'Please. Please, don't – don't stop.'

She laughs, shifts her weight and kisses him full on the mouth, slides her tongue in and laughs some more at him. But when she pulls away, she's serious, and he opens his eyes, able to feel it.

'I mean it,' she tells him, voice low and eyebrows drawn. The back of her fingers trace across the sharp line of his cheekbone, smooth out to rest over his ear, pull back in to rake across the hair by his ear. 'If you want to stop, just red light me. I want to be able to hear you beg me to stop, that you can't go on, and I want to be able to keep going. Promise me.'

'I promise,' he says, studies her face a little more, wants to touch the hard line of her mouth but can't find the coordination.

He wants this – asked for it even. This was his idea, something he'd been working up the courage to suggest for months. No one had ever broken him, he told her after dinner one night, curled up on the sofa with her nestled between his legs and his head on the arm. Not Rome, not Denmark, not France. No one had ever broken him the way he was being broken now. He never let them break him like that, never let them close enough to be dependent on them. Not even Alfred, not America, especially not the boy. Wouldn't bring him to his bed to let him try. I've seen too much, he told her, fingers trailing down her arm. I'm too old now, I've had too much power and too much responsibility. Just once I'd like someone to take responsibility for me. To have everything that I am in their hands and break me into a thousand pieces.

He told her she was the only one he trusted enough to do it.

She had agreed only on the condition that they had a red light, green light. She has seen him broken in different ways, and would not have him locking himself in the bathroom and punching the wall until she can see the bones of his knuckles because he pushed himself too far. He didn't think he needed it, but agreed anyway.

One of his ribs must be broken, or at least fractured. His chest aches in ways it shouldn't, his heart pounding hard enough to make everything jump. His chest, his wrists, his neck, everything jumps with the rate of his heart. She is the only one to have ever done this to him. The only one to ever get a reaction like this. She's the only one that ever will.

Head tilted back and eyes screwed shut, he can't see her, can barely hear her over the erratic beating of his heart, but she swoops in from nowhere, teeth raking across the swell of his Adam's apple, biting and laughing against his neck when he swallows and it jumps.

'You're beautiful,' she tells him, and covers him in little bites and kisses.

He's really not, has had all of his flaws pointed out to him a hundred times over; the sharpness of his features, his eyebrows, his sideburns and how after hundreds of years, he's still terrible at shaving properly. Anyone who has seen him shirtless pokes fun at his freckles and falls silent over his scars. He's too thin, Francis tells him, too wiry. He can't be loved; there simply isn't enough of him.

'I mean it,' she tells him, mouth on one of the Blitz scars. 'You _are_ beautiful. One day you'll believe it.'

'Not likely,' he gasps, arches into her. His fingers knot into his sheets.

'Pity.'

And she moves on, presses kisses over his heart, and he can almost feel her frown at how fast his heart is beating, how erratic its rhythm.

'Sweetheart,' she whispers, and pushes herself up so she can tangle her fingers in his hair and make him look at her. 'Sweetheart, calm down. I won't hurt you. Stop panicking.'

'I'm not panicking.' But it's so quiet, and his eyes are so wild.

'Yes,' she argues. 'You are. You know you are. Your heart never beats like this. Stop thinking, my love. Let go, let me take care of you.'

That was what this was, after all. He breathes hard through his nose when she kisses him, struggles to find a steady grounding to calm himself with, and she runs her hands through his hair, down the shells of his ears and catching in the rings, down his neck and over his shoulders, a steady, gentle pressure, soothing and constant and familiar. Their hands twine, his body relaxes, and his heart stops trying to escape his ribcage.

'There,' she whispers, traces the shape of his lips with her fingertip. 'That's better, isn't it?'

He pouts, kisses her fingers, and nods.

'Good.'

She kisses him again, a long, tender thing with dovetailed lips and the hint of a smile, and then her attention turns, once again, to the task at hand. The brief respite had taken the edge off, and he feels everything she does, all the touches and kisses with a more sober sort of keenness. He had been drunk on her, but now he has his wits about him once more. Not that they stay for very long, of course, because the attention she devotes to his freckles has him arching and fisting his hands in the sheets and he's mindless all over again, heartbeat erratic and back to the nonsensical rhythm of before.

He feels the sigh she heaves against his ribs more than he hears it, but that doesn't help him calm down. She smoothes her hands down his thighs, digs her fingers in and drags him back, keeps him with her before guiding him down, letting him slip through her fingers in the way she knows he can cope, not just throwing him in at the deep end and holding him under.

Somewhere between a touch and a kiss he goes, lets her pull him down and thought leaves his head, and all that's left of him is the faint sensation of her touching him. She whispers a praise into the inside of his thigh, sinks her teeth in, one of her favourite places to bite, and his leg jerks. The skin doesn't break, but there will be a bruise for a week or so.

Eventually, when the time comes and he shatters, he cries. It says a lot about the strength of her conviction, about the strength of her love for him that she managed it at all, let alone made him cry as he lay there shaking and gasping for breath his lungs couldn't gather. Her fingers brush along his skin, wipe away the tears and her thumb smoothes across his brow, hushing him quietly when she leans down to press a kiss against his unresponsive mouth. Later, he will laugh about the kiss of life and he's not a pirate any more. She will remind him that he was never a pirate, he was wrapped around Elizabeth's finger just like the rest of them, and she will admit to it making her jealous. But he wasn't hers then, not like he is now, like he has been for a hundred years. They were just friends.

'Oh, how dull,' she says, kneeling between his legs again to clean up the mess with a warm cloth. 'Friends! Friends is so boring. This was _much_ more fun.'

He hums, still a little unresponsive, and doesn't answer her. She doesn't seem to mind, just tosses the cloth into the bathroom – impressive aim, he thinks, but then he did teach her – and crawls up to lie beside him, pulling him where she wants him.

'If I thought you could do it,' she muses, drawing patterns on his chest with an idle finger. 'I'd ask you to do it. That. To me.'

He raises his eyebrows, but doesn't open his eyes. 'Is that a challenge?' he slurs, half-asleep and words caught in his throat.

'Oh,' she hums, and wriggles a leg between his. 'I like that accent. Feel free to use that when you try. But another time. Later. Sleep now, sweet. I'll be here in the morning.'

She kisses him until he goes under, buried alive under the warmth of her mouth and doesn't surface until the morning when she pulls him out.

**++End++**

**NOTES::**

Apologies for the lateness, but I've been doing other things, really struggled with this word (as you can tell by the lacking quality lmao) and have just generally been going through a period of self-hate with my writing. But things should speed up again soon maybe.

**++Vince++**


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